


Witchpyre

by dead_stardust



Series: The Fire Inside You [1]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Aftermath of Torture, Backstory, Bittersweet, Character Death, Codrii Speakers, Confessions, Flashbacks, Gen, Love Letters, Multi, Witch Hunts, deathbed confessions, elder belnades just be like "my baby now", if you squint really hard then you'll see arn's crush on sypha, it's real sypha lore hours
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:46:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24817075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dead_stardust/pseuds/dead_stardust
Summary: On his deathbed, Elder Belnades tells Sypha about her parents.
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades
Series: The Fire Inside You [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1805638
Kudos: 27





	Witchpyre

**Author's Note:**

> I gave Elder Belnades the first name of Tomas for the sake of storytelling. I also came up with a few original Speakers as side characters.

“You never did fulfill your promise to me.”

Sypha sat at her grandfather’s deathbed, kneeling by his side as she clasped his hand. The elder’s breathing was hoarse and weak as he heaved. The man had been battling a sickness for quite some time, and it was only by sheer luck that the Codrii Speaker caravan had found Sypha and her traveling companions to let the woman stay by her grandfather’s side in his final days.

The other ten members of the caravan circled the room, witnessing the elder’s last moments. Trevor Belmont hung by the doorframe, and Adrian Tepes was in the other room, ready to dig a grave at Sypha’s command. It would be any day now, and no amount of medicine could rejuvenate the Elder.

“Remind me again what that promise was,” Elder Belnades said with a slight chuckle. “I’ve promised you many things, my dear.”

“You told me that when the time was right, you’d tell me who my parents were,” Sypha said. All she knew about her parentage was that she had been adopted by the elder as a baby. Nothing more, nothing less.

The elder looked out at the rest of the Speakers. “Please, give us some privacy. I need to speak to my granddaughter alone.”

The group all gave mutterings of agreement as they left. Trevor raised an eyebrow and asked “I as well?”

“Sypha is sure to tell you eventually. You may as well stay,” the elder said, then turned to his granddaughter. “It all depends on if you want him to hear.”

“He’ll know eventually,” Sypha laughed as she held back tears. “He’s my-”

“I know the two of you are lovers, and the half-vampire as well,” Elder Belnades said. The elder wriggled his hand from Sypha’s grip and curled a lock of her hair behind her ear. “I suppose it’s fitting that your hair is so deep a red,” he said. “I found you in a fire. Your mother’s home was being burned to the ground, and somewhere within all the smoke and ash, you had the strength to cry out. You called to me, to _us.”_

* * *

In a small town outside of Valencia, Spain, a younger Tomas Belnades instructed the Codrii Speakers to head towards a plume of fire.

“Get as many buckets you can find,” he said. He grabbed the arm of one of the younger Speakers, and a magic-user, at that. “No spells, Isabel. Keep yourself safe.”

The woman nodded and rushed off to help with putting out the fire. Tomas found a resident of the town. “How did this fire start?”

“That’s the house of a witch,” the resident, an older woman holding a baby, said. “We’re trying to purge our village of her wretchedness. The church said there’s all sorts of books on demons and Satan in there. We can’t let that get into the wrong hands.”

“Hm. And what happened to this witch?”

“She’s awaiting trial at the church. But there’s no doubt about it. Someone saw her using her black magics the other day. Said she hexed him. Poor boy’s still in shock,” the woman said. “She’ll be executed by nightfall, I bet.”

“I see. Well, we can’t let her house burn,” Tomas said. “Something else could catch alight, and soon your whole village will go up.”

“Alright. Don’t expect me to pitch in,” she shrugged before walking away.

The Speaker sighed and went back to the cottage, watching his fellow members hard at work putting out the fire. The crackling of the flames and the breaking of wood screamed in his ears. He pulled aside another member. “I’m going to talk to the bishop of this town, if anyone asks where I am,” he said, before making his way to the church.

In the square in front of the church sat a metal cage, with a woman inside. She was bound in leather and chains as she knelt in a puddle of her own vomit and blood. One eye was bruised and swelling over, and blood dripped from her mouth. She wore nothing but loose rags, and her flesh had been stabbed and whipped several times over. Her gaze matched Tomas’.

 _“Is she safe?!”_ The alleged witch cried in desperation.

“Shut it!” A priest yelled, kicking the cage.

“Is my daughter safe?!” The witch repeated. “She’s in the house! Please, is she okay?!”

“I said shut it!” The priest stuck his spear through the bars, jabbing her in the side.

“I-” The Speaker looked back at the burning building, then at the woman. “I don’t know…” He burst into a sprint, running back to where the witch’s house was. The cries of the falling house weren’t bending wood. It was the wailing of a child.

“Make a path,” he instructed Isabel. “The witch’s baby is in there.”

The Speaker-magician nodded and shot a spout of water into the house, giving Tomas a way to get into the wreckage. He pushed aside smoldering wood and ash, burning his hands in the process, as he found a child’s cradle.

A small, underdeveloped baby with a scoop of hair as orange as the fires cracking around her lay inside of the cradle. Her face was red as she screamed and wailed. The Speaker picked up the child and rushed out of the home, just as a rafter came crashing down. The baby’s cries turned into coughs and wheezes.

Another Speaker approached Tomas and took the baby from him, and set the child on her back. He watched as his fellow member breathed life back into the baby. “It should be okay,” the Speaker said at last, after five agonizing minutes. The child cried once more, though her exhaustion was apparent. “The little one is strong.”

“She’s barely a newborn,” Tomas noted. He picked up the baby and held her to his chest. “These townsfolk won’t want to take her in, will they?”

“I doubt it,” his companion said. “Daughter of a witch. They’ll drown her.”

“I’ll care for her,” Tomas said. “She’ll be safe with us.” He looked down at the baby, who had fallen fast asleep. “Someone’s had a long day. We should set up camp soon. The sun is setting.”

…

“The witch is being burnt tonight,” a Speaker said as he arrived at the camp. “I picked up the information at the inn.”

Tomas sat up. He had been sitting next to another member of the caravan, Josefina, who had been breastfeeding the baby. Josefina had a child herself two years prior, and was able to stimulate her body with a few herbs so as to allow the child to feed. Her son, Arn, was laying at her side, fast asleep under a blanket.

“What else did you find out?” Tomas asked.

“The witch was called Rosita, and she was a loner,” the Speaker shrugged. “I didn’t hear anything about her child, or a lover. She kept to herself for the most part.”

“Hm.” Tomas sat back and looked over at the child, who had detached from Josefina and was being burped. “That’s all?”

“I didn’t find this at the inn, but at the house,” the Speaker said, pulling out a journal with singed page edges. He handed it to the elder, who flipped through it. “Do you recognize this script?”

“It’s some sort of cipher text,” Tomas shrugged, presented with words in a style of writing he had never encountered before. “If I had the patience and a bit of time, I could unscramble it. For now, I don’t think I need to stress over that just yet.”

…

“She still doesn’t have a name yet,” Josefina said as she passed off the baby to Tomas. It had been a few days since the murder of the witch Rosita and the rescuing of her newborn daughter.

“Sypha,” he determined. “After the messages her mother left behind.”

“That’s a bit silly, isn’t it? It’s pretty.” Josefina chuckled. “Will you ever tell her about this? About her mother.”

“If she asks. I would want her to carry on the tale of her family, keep it within her own personal store of history,” Tomas said. He played with Sypha’s little curl of ginger hair. “I wish I could have saved her mother, but there was nothing I could do.”

“You didn’t even talk to the church,” Josefina said.

“There was nothing I could say. Don’t kill the witch? We don’t know what she did,” Tomas argued. “I don’t deal with black magic, Josefina. That’s why I didn’t trust Gabriel Belmont when he came to us asking for our histories to be written down. I don’t trust it. But this child - Sypha - the mere act of being born to a mother such as Rosita should not condemn her to a death.”

“What if that journal contains black magic? What then?”

“I’ll deal with that if it does,” Tomas determined. “No matter her mother’s sins, Sypha shall be loved.”

* * *

“I still have the journal,” Elder Belnades said. “My bag.”

Sypha got up and grabbed her grandfather’s leather knapsack and handed it to him, and he pulled out the old journal. He passed it off to her.

“I never did unscramble it. You’re so much smarter than me, Sypha. You’ll be able to figure it out,” he said. “Find out what your mother wrote.”

“I will, Abuelo,” Sypha said.

“You haven’t called me that since you were ten,” the elder chuckled. “I love you, Sypha. And I’m sure your mother would have been proud of you. Now, please, let me rest.”

“I’m staying here,” she said, taking his hand once more. “I don’t want you to be alone.”

“Goodnight, sir,” Trevor said, backing out of the room. “By the way, do I have your blessing-?”

“Certainly not, Belmont.” The Elder laughed, and let out a few wheezes. “Sypha, commit your mother’s story to memory. Write it down if you must. Don’t let it fade away.”

“I will. I promise.”

* * *

“He was a good man,” Arn said as he put a hand on Sypha’s shoulder. “He was a grandfather to all of us.”

Trevor and Adrian had finished up burying Elder Tomas Belnades in the middle of a field, underneath a tree blooming in the first light of spring. The other Speakers were putting flowers on his grave and saying their goodbyes. Sypha sat in the grass, leaning on her best friend and the son of the woman who helped nurse her as a child.

“He loved you,” Arn continued. “He was so scared when you went in the catacombs to search for the sleeping soldier.”

“He yelled at me when I left,” Sypha said, snuggling into Arn’s shoulder. “He said I was being stupid.”

“He said that out of love.”

“I know,” she sighed. “I know…” Sypha took the journal out of her bag and flipped through it. Analyzing the text, she furrowed her brow, flipping through the pages. “Arn, Arnie, do you have any paper on you?’

“Uh, someone else does,” he said. “Why?”

“There’s a pattern to this,” Sypha said. She jumped up. “Treffy! Adrie! Do either of you have paper on you?”

“What do I look like, a librarian?” Trevor yelled back.

“Shit.” Sypha ran back inside the inn that they were staying at, rushing up to the room she was sharing with Trevor and Adrian. She grabbed ink and paper and scribbled down some words.

“What are you doing?” Arn asked as he caught up with her.

“I can see the patterns! Shut up, let me write,” Sypha said.

“We were going to go out for drinks.”

“Shush!”

“I’ll bring you back some food,” Arn said.

_“Shush!”_

* * *

Trevor and Adrian stumbled back into the inn’s room, all red in the face. Arn followed them, holding a basketful of food. “You’re still up?”

“I figured it out,” Sypha smiled, holding the journal to her chest. “I found what she wrote.” She held out a piece of paper to Arn, who was now surrounded by Trevor and Adrian. “My father was Napolitano. His name was Felice and he was a traveling herbalist. My mother wrote this journal for him. It’s full of her different remedies.”

_My dear Felice, the love of my life,_

_I dedicate this documentation to you, to our love, and to the life growing inside me that you’ll surely meet when you return from your studies. I can’t wait for the two of you to meet and for us to be a proper family. You’ll teach her medicine and music, and I’ll teach her magic and mathematics. Wouldn’t that be nice, Feli? She’ll be as smart and talented as you, though I believe she’ll have my beauty._

_As I write this, she’s moving around, she’s calling out to you, asking her father to come home. I haven’t given her a name yet, but I do know she’ll be a girl._

_Come home soon. We’re waiting._

_Rosita_

“I’ve translated three of the recipes so far,” Sypha said. “One of them is actually a recipe for cookies. One’s a list of different herbs to treat coughs, and the last is a little tea to help an upset stomach. I’m going to translate the whole book and rewrite it. Maybe we can store a copy in the hold.” She made eye contact with Trevor, who was starting to sober up.

“Yeah, of course,” he nodded. “Is there anything in there about curing a hangover?”

“I haven’t found one yet, if it exists,” Sypha said. “There’s different love letters to my father between each recipe.”

“Maybe he’s still out there,” Adrian suggested. “It might be a long shot, but there might be more clues to his identity in the letters.”

“Maybe! And-And we can use a distance mirror from the castle and find him!” Sypha said. “My grandfather wanted me to carry on my mother’s story. Finding my father will be a way to do just that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I rewatched season 1 today and I just... I love Arn so much he's so cute and I wish he got more screentime. I wanna squish his dumb face.
> 
> Season 4 bring back the twink
> 
> Anyway Sypha is a witch in the games, right? But now she's a Speaker. What if her mama was a witch and that's where she gets her magical prowess?


End file.
